Tolerance allocation is an important step in the design process. It is necessary to produce high quality components cost effectively. However, the process of allocating tolerances can be time consuming and difficult, especially for complex models. This work demonstrates a novel CAD based approach, where the sensitivities of product dimensions to changes in the values of the feature parameters in the CAD model are computed. These are used to automatically establish the assembly response function for the product. This information has been used to automatically allocate tolerances to individual part dimensions to achieve specified tolerances on the assembly dimensions, even for tolerance allocation in more than one direction simultaneously. It is also shown how pre-existing constraints on some of the part dimensions can be represented and how situations can be identified where the required tolerance allocation is not achievable. A methodology is also presented that uses the same information to model a component with different amounts of dimensional variation to simulate the effects of tolerance stack-up.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.